Any Portrait is a Self-Portrait: Bennett Miller and Speed Levitch Discuss “The Cruise”

Any Portrait is a Self-Portrait: Bennett Miller and Speed Levitch Discuss "The Cruise"

Any Portrait is a Self-Portrait: Bennett Miller and SpeedLevitch Discuss "The Cruise"

by Anthony Kaufman

When it screened at the LAIFF, indieWIRE staffers were astounded.We did not know, as New Yorkers sharing in a similarly exhilarating andisolating experience in our (un)fair city, if we were the only onesstruck by Bennett Miller’s witty and profound portrait of Timothy“Speed” Levitch, a Manhattan double decker tour guide who cruisesthrough life, thriving on chaos, and waxing hilarious bits of historyand philosophy to unsuspecting people from all around the world.

We soon found out that we were not the only ones seized by this intimateurban profile of a man compared to the likes of Jerry Lewis and TinyTim, Truman Capote and Woody Allen — even Gore Vidal and Willy Wonkacomparisions appear in rousing notices from the Los Angeles Times, theHollywood Reporter, the LA Weekly, the Village Voice and the New Times.And after an enthusiastic screening at New York’s docfest on Saturday,where even documentary legend Jean Rouch (“Chronicle of a Summer“) showedup, “The Cruise” has now become a bit of a legend in its own right, with itsone-man crew, miniDV black & white cinematography, simple, subtle story,and an emotional staying power that will likely propel it from a film festivalfavorite to a documentary distributed to a theater near you.

Walking through Central Park with Miller and Speed, documentarian and subject,was like being inside the movie — dumbstruck by Speed’s knowledge of thePark’s every detail and guided by Miller’s calm, observant and encouragingremarks. Although reading a portion of our conversation gives some indicationof the breadth, poetry, and wackiness of Timothy “Speed” Levitch and hisunpretentious profiler Bennett Miller, it is simply incomparable to witnessingtheir collaboration in “The Cruise.”

indieWIRE: What were your expectations? When you made this film, didyou think, oh, I want it to have a theatrical release?

Bennett Miller: No. My expectations were that this would be the lastthing I do before I leave the film business forever. And I had no realexpectations of anybody ever seeing it — I did it by myself and by thetime it was completely shot, there was not another individual that hadeven seen it. It wasn’t until the first rough cut screening — whenpeople began to respond to it — that I realized it could be morepopular than I expected. It does speak to people on biggerlevels than I would have expected, but I never thought about it. Inever thought about it.

iW: At what point did you start to think about it?

Miller: I would say, when we begin to show it to people. Even at itsearliest stages it became very clear that people were moved inunexpected ways by the movie. It’s attractive to people on asuperficial level, I knew people would be interested — just thefascination of being able to look at a purely bizarre human being. Buton a deeper level, as the film reveals him, we can all identify with himand that’s where the lasting feelings about the film come from and whypeople seem to be reacting the way they’re reacting.

iW: At what point did the video-camera come into play in yourrelationship?

Timothy “Speed” Levitch: Bennett came onto the double decker bus, with apretty simple video-camera. And it was in the winter time, in December,and I was, in particular despair at that time. And I remember the firstday, he came on, I was working with “The Kabul Comet”, Najim Shaquid,who was one of the great double decker drivers of the original RedCavalry. And we buzzed around the city and did a loop and he wasbasically having a good time with the video-camera and I realized he wasjust on the ride with everybody else who had a videocamera — there weretwenty other people on the bus with video-cameras. And we were alltogether, looking out the window. (He laughs a gigglish chortle thatreally can’t be described with words.)

iW: Was that camera the beginning or was that just research?

Miller: I guess you could call it research. I shot about 80 hoursbefore I began shooting what would become the footage that we’d cuttogether. So there was about a 80 disposable hours before I figured outwhat I was doing.

iW: Were you thinking about structure?

Miller: I was specifically not thinking about structure. I made astrong determination not to structure it in any way in my brain. Iheard Norman Mailer say, in an interview about writing, that youshould not make decisions about the characters and the plot andwhat happens. As a writer, you have to be on the adventure,the same way a reader needs to be, otherwise, it’s a little bitcontrived. I decided that’s what I wanted to do.

There was something compelling about “Speed”. To get to it, I didn’twant to delineate it in my own mind and try to force it out one wayor the other, I wanted to get it naturally and make sense out of it later.

iW: Speed, how did you feel about being the object of the lens?

Speed: It was a psychedelic experience. And a specific craft to bepracticed. Like piano playing. To be an object is an athleticism andan artistry, (laughs) and an opulent one, I should say. It’s like beingyour own instrument, playing yourself as your own instrument. And thequestion is, are you in tune and are you a virtuoso? What kind of aninstrument is it going to be? Is it a clarinet? Is it a piano? Is it atympany drum? Sometimes it’s all of those things. Often, I just becamewhat we all are on a daily basis — which is a walking, 80-instrumentsymphony. Like bang — violins, cellos. . . (Laughs)

iW: Did you feel you changed at all because the camera was there?

Speed: Well, it was a craft — it is a craft. It took me a long time tofind the right rhythm, the right rhythmic dance with this thing, thecamera. And of course, a lot of things clicked when I began tounderstand that the camera was my lover. And vice versa, when we fellin love. There was a long time there where I was certainly a walkingrough draft, waiting to find the right rhythms, to just look into acamera directly and speak.

iW: Bennett, how collaborative do you think the process was between the twoof you?

Miller: From my perspective, being a voyeur and wanting some detachmentfrom the subject itself and yet wanting to get at something from withinit — I saw my job as cultivating an atmosphere for Speed toself-consciouslessly allow the aspects of himself that interested me tobe evoked and to capture them in a cinematic and artful way and then toput them together in such a way that an audience coming in cold could feeland experience my bigger feelings that I had toward Timothy’s being.

Hanging out with Speed made me feel a particular way. I found somethingextraordinary in him. And I think Speed will attest to this, that most humanbeings before the film did not give him the same credit. There was a lot ofquicker judgement of him and it required some looking into. It required somepatience and sensitivity and interest and curiosity to appreciate,because he’s fucking unusual.

Speed: (agreeing) Yeah, yeah.

Miller: But . . . I don’t consider it a performance piece, I don’t consider itas exhibitionism and just entertainment. I think what speaks to people isthat who he is gets captured, gets evoked, gets presented. It’s a portrait.

iW: How long was the editing?

Miller: About 8 months. We were on a full-time intensive…we weren’tdoing anything else.

iW: Speed, did you come in during editing and check it out?

Speed: Very rarely. I dedicated myself to the chaos of the universe.The universe breathes through chaos. And Bennett’s mind was in fullthrottle disassociation with the chaos, so I was confident to leave itin his hands and to let it unfold organically. I think that the bestmoments of our collaboration are these moments when we were hanging offthe same edge together and there were moments when ecstasy knew us bythe same name. And perhaps, that’s what true collaboration is about.

iW: What were those moments when you were both hanging?

Speed: There are moments in that footage when the despair that I amfeeling is the despair that he’s feeling and that is why he was able tofixate the camera in a certain way. When I watched the film recently,it came across to me as a distillation of a character, like there areseveral test tubes on a table, different phylums of tantra, and thething becomes a discussion between multiple personalities. (Laughs)

Miller: Someone after seeing the movie said to me, “It’s aself-portrait.”

Speed: This is Leonardo DaVinci’s original dictum. I think he said,“Any portrait is a self-portrait” and that’s a beautiful process. Weare marching through the dark forestries of ourselves together andthat’s what collaboration is about.

Comradery is, we all have battlefields, I’m going to supply you witharmaments and I’m going to back up your artillery [Gestures towardsKaufman]. Like, together we’re going to go in on the left flank on yourbattlefield and then later in the afternoon, you’re going to give me atank for my battlefield. You’ve got a special adeptness andunderstanding of the horse cavalry unit, you’re going to help me surroundthe enemy.

We are contributing to each other’s battlefronts in the frontiers ofour awareness. By speaking to Burrito [Speed’s nickname for Bennett]and his camera, I am sharing in his energy, we’re experiencingosmosis as a tactile experience. What’s happening there is that he istaking me, escorting me into new aspects of myself. I’m discoveringthings about myself that I didn’t even know, in the impromptu moments ofimprovisation in front of this camera.

(pause)

Miller: I agree with what Speed said. . .

[“The Cruise” screens this week at the Newport International Film Festival.]

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Next week, with “The Cruise” as a reference point, indieWIRE willpublish a DIY article exploring the process of making a film utilizingemerging digital technology.]